


Pennsylvania Jones and The Physicist of Doom

by weasleytook



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1930s, Crossover, F/M, Inspired by Indiana Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 22:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8419477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleytook/pseuds/weasleytook
Summary: Amateur archaeologist Pennysylvania "Penny" Jones is enlisted by Marshall College to clean up her cousin Indy's mess in Pankot, India. Sounds like fun, until they force a very tweedy, very annoying, Sheldon Cooper to go along as her assistant.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fujiidom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fujiidom/gifts).



> You said you would take anything with these two. And that, dear anonymous friend, is what you're getting.

Penny was in big trouble.

Not the kind of trouble where she was dangling over a pit of highly poisonous scorpions. That was the kind of trouble she could get out of.

This was the kind of trouble where she was sitting in front of a trio of university faculty members. She had dressed the way they expected her to dress, long skirt, crisp clean blouse, hair pinned up. Penny even made sure to cross her legs at the ankles primly.

She would have rather been dangling over the scorpions again.

“Miss Jones –“

“Professor Wolowitz, I know what this is about –“

“Do you?”

“Of course, there was a little incident in Morocco with the local authorities and I can explain.”

The older man in the middle of the table spoke up, “What incident in Morocco?”

Penny flashed her best grin at Dr. Gablehauser. “Incident? Did I say incident? I meant – nothing. Nothing happened in Morocco, sir.”

The third man at the table was someone she had never seen before. Tall, pale, dark-haired and not a hair or piece of clothing out of place. He made a huffing noise and wrote something down in a small black journal.

“So why am I here?”

“We have another job for you to do.I’m sure you heard about the mess in India a few months ago.”

Dr. Gablehauser slid a stack of notes and drawings across the table to her, but Penny didn’t need to look at them. She was already very familiar with the story. “I would hardly call it a mess. Dr. Jones saved a couple hundred children who had been enslaved, brought down a vicious cult and recovered a valuable artifact. I’m not sure why we’re still discussing the matter.”

The tall man made more notes in his little book with a “hmm” as he did so. He still didn’t say anything, but Professor Wolowitz replied this time, “He recovered one valuable artifact. Lost two. And there are two more Sankara stones whose whereabouts are unknown.”

“So you want me to go to India to try and find the remaining stones? Sounds like a needle in a haystack, if you ask me.”

“Not exactly.We’ve been asked to send a team to work with the local excavation crew as they explore the catacombs and temple that Dr. Jones destroyed. We need you there as a representative of the university and if you happen to find the missing Sankara stones, then all the better.”

Penny sighed and noticed that the man she didn’t know was looking at her with interest. When he noticed her looking in his direction, he went directly back to scribbling in his notebook. Penny looked back at the other two men and asked, “Why not just send Indy? This was his doing.”

“Mid-terms,” answered Dr. Gablehauser, “But we aren’t sending you alone.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, so she attempted to protest immediately, “But –“

Wolowitz didn’t let her finish and interjected, “I volunteered to accompany you myself, but my mother hates when I travel. Plus, I thought we might get too distracted, if you know what I mean –“

“Stop. Please.” 

Wolowitz had labored under the delusion for the three years that she had known him that someday she was going to ravage him in an empty classroom. Penny scrunched up her face and looked away from Wolowitz towards the other two men.

Dr. Gablehauser, as usual, brought things back to the business at hand, “You’ll be bringing our colleague here, Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Details on your travel arrangements are in the notes I handed you.”

Penny looked at the pale skinny guy in the buttoned-up tweed vest and jacket and had to stifle a laugh. “This guy? He hardly looks suited for the kind of work that I do. And if you think I need a babysitter, then you need to find someone else to take these kinds of jobs from now on.”

She pushed her chair back from the table and stood to leave but Dr. Cooper cleared his throat and she just had to know what he was going to say. So she stopped, crossed over arms over her chest and stared him down.

“Miss Jones,” he said making sure to place emphasis on the fact that she was not a Doctor or a Professor of any sort. “I must tell you that I am as reluctant about this assignment as you seem to be. I am purely an academic and am only taking this assignment as work in the field is required to attain my Ph.D. in Archaeology. I have no intention of acting as your babysitter, though I cannot fathom how this university thinks it’s appropriate to send an uneducated treasure hunter gallivanting across the world to handle items of great historical significance.”

“Pleasure to meet you too.”

“Miss Jones –“

“Enough, Dr. Cooper. I’ll see you at the airport where you can continue to denigrate my lack of an education on the long journey we have ahead of us.”

Penny grabbed the notes off the table and gave a nod to the other two men before she made her exit into the hallway.

She had a very bad feeling about this.

 

&&&

 

She spent the next two days going over the notes on what had happened in Pankot Palace earlier that year. And when she finished with one go-round, she started over again and repeated the process until she had every word memorized.

If they were sending her to India with a babysitter, she was sure as hell going to know everything she could about what they were getting in to.

When she arrived at the airport, Dr. Cooper was already on the small rickety plane that the university had chartered for them. She had traded in her skirt and blouse for her usual clothes: khaki pants with a matching button-up shirt, boots, a leather jacket, matching fedora, a satchel and a whip hooked to her belt.

So maybe she had stolen her look from another Jones, but if you asked her, she looked much better in it anyway.

Dr. Cooper looked almost exactly as he had the day she met him, the only difference was his suit was in a shade of dark grey instead of brown.

“Good afternoon, Miss Jones.”

It seemed more polite than their last meeting, but Penny still detected a hint of resentment in his voice. That was fair enough, since she felt the same way he did. She took a seat across from him and gave him a half-hearted smile in return. “You can call me Penny.”

“Short for Penelope, I presume?”

“Ahhh. Not exactly. It’s short for Pennsylvania.”

He blinked rapidly and looked as if he was about to say something cruel, so Penny ran her fingers over her whip and glared at him. “And if you ever call me Pennsylvania, I promise that you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

“Of course.” 

“Now, can I call you Sheldon or –“

“I’d prefer it if you continued to –“

Penny frowned and then shook her head before interrupting, “I think I’ll call you whatever I feel like.”

She could see the muscles in his jaw visibly clench, but he said nothing as the plane was starting to taxi across the runway. He checked, then re-checked, then triple-checked his seatbelt and Penny had to stop herself from laughing at the whole display.

Her work had put on her on airplanes, boats, trains and every form of transportation possible so this was nothing to her. But it was obvious as Sheldon clutched the armrests and squeezed his eyes shut tightly that he had likely never been on a plane before. Most people hadn’t, but someone in academia surely had to have traveled at some point.

When the plane hit its cruising altitude, Sheldon seemed to relax a little and opened his eyes again. Penny was still grinning at him as she asked, “Haven’t done a lot of traveling, have you?”

“I studied abroad. In Germany.”

“Got there on a ship, did you?”

“Yes.”

“I figured. So, explain something to me: you’re a doctor but it’s definitely not in Archaeology.”

He shifted in his seat uncomfortably and when he realized she wasn’t going to leave him alone, he replied, “I have degrees in both Physics and Mathematics. But I’m currently working on my doctorate in Archaeology as well.” 

“Those fields don’t seem to fit at all.”

He sighed and it was obvious that he was tired of explaining himself to people, but he continued anyway, “There has been rather limited grant money in theoretical physics the past few years, so I took some time off to sow my wild oats.”

“I think you and I have very different definitions of sowing wild oats.”

“I’m a scientist. Archaeology barely even qualifies as a soft science. It’s a bit embarrassing and a step down from what I was doing, to be quite honest.”

“Then why pick Archaeology and not chemistry or something else?”

“I thought perhaps I could use my scientific knowledge to help make advancements in the field. Improvements in the excavation process, restoration and even the ability to figure out what time period artifacts are from can all be done with the aid of science.”

She grinned and pulled the file she had built on this assignment from her bag. “Yeah. And how’s that working out for you?”

He didn’t need to respond because she already knew. He just frowned at her and checked his seatbelt once more. Penny looked down at her notes, hoping to find something she hadn’t seen the first twenty times she went over them, but Sheldon interrupted before she even made it past the third line.

“And you, Miss Jones, how did you end up here?”

“Penny. I said to call me Penny. Also, I don’t know why you’re asking. You look like the rest of those stuffy academic types, which means you’ve probably done all the research on me that you can. What else is there to know?”

Sheldon nodded. Of course he had done his homework, they always did. “Are you really the cousin of Dr. Henry Jones, Junior?”

“You bet I am.”

“I have yet to meet Dr. Jones but I admire his work, as well as his father’s. We use the senior Dr. Jones’ writings on Grail lore in many of our classes. Though I’m not a believer in the spiritual aspects surrounding the Holy Grail, his work is astonishingly detailed and endlessly fascinating.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“They must be so proud to have a common treasure hunter in the family.”

Penny gritted her teeth and turned her head to glare at him. He was lucky that she was feeling awfully generous today. Generous enough that she didn’t just choke him outright or push him out of the plane without a parachute.

“Listen, _Doctor_ , you and I are going to be working together for an indefinite number of days and that is the only reason I haven’t reached across the seat to slap you already. I am not just some common treasure hunter. Treasure hunters are filthy, no-good scoundrels who are only in it for a buck. I do this job for the same reasons the rest of the Jones family does it. To make sure these priceless artifacts can be enjoyed by the world. In a museum. The only difference between Henry Jones Junior and I is that he has a bunch of fancy degrees.”

“Degrees and experience and –“

“I have more experience in the field than 75% of the faculty members at your university or any other _combined_. See, my mom had her hands full with us kids and dad was always working, so I spent a lot of time with my Uncle Henry and my cousin Indy growing up. I spent my summers learning more about history and archaeology than most college students can even dream of. I went on my first dig in Tunisia when I was 8 and I haven’t looked back.”

Sheldon still looked skeptical so Penny just sighed and put her head back against the seat. “Listen, Doctor, I really don’t care what you think of me or my lack of an education. Just remember while we’re in Pankot, you’re working for me and not with me. Your degree depends on what I tell the university.”

She smirked in his direction and then pulled her fedora down so that it was partially covering her face. 

It was going to be a very long trip.

 

&&&

 

Getting to Delhi was hardly a leisure trip even when you were traveling with someone you _like_. It took three different planes and was a nearly two-day journey.

They didn’t speak much when they were awake as they separately studied their notes on Pankot Palace or read the few books they had brought with them. 

By the time they reached Delhi, they could at least speak civilly to one another, though it was clear they weren’t going to be close friends any time soon.

Penny didn’t hate him, but she thought he was condescending, rude and full of himself. And even though they had assured her that he wasn’t a babysitter, she still didn’t trust him not to go reporting back to Dr. Gablehauser every time she did something he deemed wrong.

It was morning when they were whisked away from the tarmac to take the drive to Pankot. They were going to be sent to work right away, but all Penny wanted to do was sleep. She was so tired from the trip that all of her bones seemed to ache.

The local team had a camp already set up and the first to greet them was a familiar face. Before she even went to greet him, she reached in her bag for a small metal flask and handed it over for him to take a sip.

“I’m assuming nothing has changed since the last time we worked together.”

He swallowed the drink of whiskey and then smiled at her as he replied, “No, but thank you for being prepared.”

Penny motioned to Sheldon who was watching the whole exchange curiously, “Dr. Sheldon Cooper, this is Dr. Rajesh Koothrappali from the University of Delhi.”

The two men shook hands but Sheldon still looked confused, “And the flask?”

“Well, Raj has a little bit of a problem. He can’t talk to women unless he gets a little liquored up first. So I came prepared this time.”

“Interesting. You know, Dr. Koothrappali, I have a few colleagues at the university who would probably love to study whatever psychological problem you have that prevents you from talking to women.”

“Errrr. Ahh. Thank you, but –“

Penny shook her head and nudged Sheldon with the point of her elbow. “Come on, boys, let’s get to work.”

 

&&&

 

Raj had wanted to take them on a tour of the camp, but Penny insisted on seeing how the excavation was coming along. Or wasn’t coming along as it turned out. They had donned their hard hats because there were places where things were still crumbling, but the crew had barely a made a dent in the twisted maze that had been underneath Pankot Palace for so long.

“This is it? This is all you’ve got?” Penny asked after a brief tour of the tunnels they had already dug out.

“Normally we would consider using explosives to get past the parts that are not essential to our goal. But –“

Penny sighed and nodded in understanding, “You don’t know which parts are essential or not because you have no idea where the stones are.”

“Exactly.”

Sheldon had been walking behind her the whole time and he stumbled slightly into one of the walls, shifting loose a few smaller rocks that he had to avoid by jumping out of the way.

"Sheldon, don't. Don't touch anything."

"I assure you I would rather not. Who knows what kinds of things have been growing underneath this place for the past three hundred years?"

Penny shared a look with Raj and she mumbled in his direction, "No wonder he didn't want to do field work."

"Pardon?"

She looked back towards him with a bright smile and replied, "Nothing. I just figure we better get out of here and come back tomorrow. It's getting dark soon."

Raj slid past them to lead the way out and began to explain their sleeping arrangements as they walked back to camp. "Penny, you'll be in the tent nearest to where we keep our supplies. It's a bit small, but you'll have it all to yourself. Dr. Cooper, you will be in the tent next door to hers with my research assistant Musheer."

They were outside the catacombs now and Sheldon glared at Raj in protest. "Sharing? But - I don't. I can't sleep in the same room as someone else."

"It's not a room. It's a tent." Penny interjected.

"Why does _she_ get her own tent and I have to share with some research assistant?"

Raj’s eyes widened and he obviously had no idea what to say or do, so Penny replied, “Because I’m a _woman_ , and from the looks of it, the only one around here.”

“That’s hardly fair.”

Penny breathed in deeply, doing her level best not to smack him right in his smug face. If he had been less of a jerk about it, she might have offered to switch places with him, since she wasn’t concerned about sharing a tent with the completely non-threatening Musheer, but she was going to stand her ground on this one.

“You’re going to have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do if you stay on this trip. So be a grown-up and handle it, _Doctor_.”

Penny grabbed her suitcase and went immediately to her tent, knowing that she was just five seconds away from a rant about fairness and equality in the field of academia. Instead of ranting, she silently prayed that Raj had brought plenty of alcohol.

 

&&&

 

The good news for Penny was that Raj had brought _plenty_ to drink and had kindly brought it to her tent after the team finished with dinner and dispersed. They were three shots into a bottle of feni when Raj asked for Sheldon’s backstory and she gladly provided what little she knew about him.

“He seems…”

Penny finished the sentence with, “Annoying?”

“Well, yes, but also - completely unsuited to this type of work.”

“Oh, for sure. If I can actually get him back to the states in one piece, it will be some kind of miracle.”

They clinked glasses and drank another shot, leading Penny into telling a story about her last adventure in Morocco, and how she spent two nights in jail due to a misunderstanding between her, the police and a street vendor caused by her shaky attempts at speaking Arabic.

Two more shots and more stories and they were laughing until they could barely breathe, causing a very infuriated Sheldon to show up at her tent in his pajamas.

“I can hear you from my tent.”

Penny feigned concern and asked, “Oh, are we keeping Musheer up?”

Raj laughed and snorted at the same time, then tried to look semi-apologetic but failed. “I’m sorry, Dr. Cooper. Just having a little fun.”

Penny held up the bottle and grinned at him. “Want to join?”

“I don’t drink.”

“That’s fair. But, do you ever have fun or is that also a foreign concept to you?”

“I have fun,” he said indignantly.

“I don’t believe that.”

He huffed quietly and then turned to leave, “Just try to keep it down. Some of us actually care about our work.”

Once he was gone, Raj turned to her and said, “I give it three days before he’s begging to go home.”

Penny shook her head and said ominously, “He’s going to die out here.”

There was a pause and then both of them broke into laughter so loud, she was surprised it didn’t send Sheldon right back into her tent to yell at them.

 

&&&

 

They spent three days following the excavation crew down into what was left of the catacombs. Penny poked and prodded anything that would sit still, and a few things that wouldn’t, but they came out empty handed each time. There was still so much of it they couldn’t reach, that she wondered if they might be there for months.

That fourth night at dinner, Raj and Penny ate while they watched Sheldon make his plate. “He’s outstayed your prediction, I’ll give him that much.”

Raj laughed and said, “But there’s still time for him to live up to yours.”

“With the progress we’ve made so far, the only thing he might die of out here is old age.”

Much to her surprise, Sheldon decided to take a seat next to her instead of eating alone in his tent. They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Sheldon finally spoke, “I’ve been meaning to ask: if the palace has a passage to this temple, why aren’t we staying there?”

Raj swallowed his bite of food and responded, “The maharajah wants nothing to do with this search and neither does the British government. They reluctantly allowed us to do the work we’re doing here, but they won’t let us touch the palace. Their passage to the temple has caved in too, so we couldn’t get in that way even if they would let us.”

Sheldon had been less annoying today than any day thus far, but perhaps the kind of tedious work they were doing was good for him, even in the dirt and muck of it. Something suddenly struck Penny and she pulled out the crudely drawn map she had been making of their explorations so far.

“Mud.”

Both men looked at her in confusion, so she continued, “Today, when we were down in tunnel C, we got to a dead end and there was mud. Three days down there and I haven’t seen a single water source, but today, there was mud. Indy said the place was flooded, so we must be getting closer.”

Raj looked unsure. “But it’s a dead end.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing this, a dead end is rarely ever a dead end.”

Sheldon nodded and it was the most pleased he had looked since they’d met. “Then tomorrow, we look for the mud.”

 

&&&

 

The next morning the three of them took the long walk to the end of Tunnel C, and the two men stood in silence watching as Penny used her lantern to look around the edges of the walls. She touched the dirt and then held up her fingers to them. 

“See? Mud.”

Raj pointed at the three solid rock faces in front of them and shrugged, “And still a dead end.”

Penny began running her hands over the rocks, looking for something, looking for _anything_ , that would prove her right. She heard Sheldon clear his throat and when she looked at him, he was holding his lantern up to a hole in the ceiling, not much higher than the top of his head.

She gave him a slight smile and wondered out loud, “How in the world did we miss that?”

“We weren’t looking for it.”

Raj left to go get some crew members and a ladder, but Penny just couldn’t wait and turned to Sheldon, “Help me up.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“Stick with me and you’ll figure out I rarely do the wise thing.”

Sheldon sighed, but gave in, offering his hands as a step up for Penny, who got a little too close to him as she practically crawled up his body to get a handhold on the ledge above her. She scrambled up into the hole and just a second later peeked over the edge and threw out her hand, “Give me my light.”

He handed her the lantern and Penny stood up to look around. When she saw what was in front of her, she said loud enough for Sheldon to hear, “Oh. Wonderful.”

“What is it?

She called back to him, “Would you believe me if I said it’s another set of tunnels?”

He said it quietly, but just loud enough that she could still hear him, “I hate this place.”

Penny laughed and thought to herself that she wasn't all too fond of it either. Raj returned a few minutes later with a ladder and a couple crew members to help . Once they had all joined Penny, she pointed to the right side tunnel and said, “Raj, you and Sheldon take that one, and I’ll take the one on the left.”

Sheldon looked completely aghast at the suggestion and Penny rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’ll have Akit and Sami with me.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about.”

Penny handed him a spare lantern and nudged him forward, “Don’t worry, Raj will keep you safe.”

Raj looked like he was unsure that he could keep that promise, but Penny didn’t have time for those two to lose their wits, so she marched forward, with Akit and Sami trailing behind. They entered the tunnel and much to Penny’s dismay, it looked exactly like every single tunnel they’d seen in the catacombs so far. She was about to give up when she heard the slight trickle of water, and noticed that the stone walls were damp.

“Beautiful,” she said when she saw it. Her victory was short-lived because she heard what sounded like boulders falling from somewhere else followed by two sets of screams that just barely penetrated through the walls.

“Raj! Sheldon!”

Penny immediately turned around and ran as fast as she could back through the tunnel, her heart pounding faster with every faint scream she heard through the walls. When they reached the end of the tunnel, she ran directly into Sheldon. He bounced off of her and started brushing himself off with his hands.

“What? What is it?”

“Spiders!”

She didn’t see anything on him and Raj at first, but then caught one crawling up Sheldon’s neck. Penny grabbed it and tossed it aside, while both men slowly collapsed to the floor, breathless and still checking themselves all over for more.

Penny kneeled down and asked, “Can one of you explain what just happened, please?”

“Spiders,” Sheldon said again, but he said it as if he had seen a ghost.

Raj looked like he wanted to vomit, but reached for the flask in his pocket instead, taking a quick drink before answering. “Found a room. A door. But it was a trap. Dropped us into another room and there were -“

Beside him, Sheldon shuddered and Penny finished Raj’s sentence, “Spiders, yeah, I got it. At least that means we did something right.”

“How so?”

“You found a trap, which means we’re close to something and I found tracks, like the ones that lead out the cliffside. All of the tracks are probably connected, we just have to figure out how.”

Sheldon put his hand on her arm and shook his head. “Penny.”

“I didn’t mean right now. Let’s get you two back to camp.”

The trip out was quiet, only broken by the sound of Sheldon occasionally shuddering as if there was still something crawling on him. When they returned to camp, Raj went to meet with his crew to make a plan for exploring the tunnel that Penny went in to, while Sheldon went to clean up and change his clothes.

Penny was going over a stack of maps and her own notes when she heard the soft swish of the tent opening. She motioned for Sheldon to come in and he took a seat across from her at the small table she had her maps on.

“Feeling better now?”

“Sometimes I feel like they’re crawling on me still, so, no, I would say not.”

Penny wrote something in the margin of her hand-drawn map and simply said, “Hmm.”

“How are you so calm about all of this”

“I’ve dealt with worse.”

“Worse than a pit of spiders?”

“Are scorpions worse than spiders?”

Sheldon shuddered and that was all the answer she needed. She grabbed two glasses and the extra bottle of feni that Raj had left in her tent and put them in front of her, pouring some for both of them. 

“Drink.”

“I don’t drink.”

“You’ll feel better.”

Sheldon picked up the glass and stared at it for a moment, so Penny picked hers up and leaned across the table to touch his glass with hers. “To scorpions.”

He shuddered again, but this time he drank and the face he made as it went down was so absurd that Penny couldn’t help but laugh. She went back to her work while Sheldon poured himself another drink.

She laid her pencil down and poured herself another drink, so she could at least attempt to catch up. “So why are you really here? And don’t say field work.”

“I thought I was going to be the next Albert Einstein.” Penny responded with a quizzical look, so he continued, “My work in physics was going nowhere. Everyone in the field agreed that I have one of the greatest minds they’ve ever seen, but perhaps I was just applying it to the wrong field.”

“Ouch.”

Sheldon shrugged and it was the most relaxed she had ever seen him look. “So I thought I’d try something different, and then try something else, and then another thing, and now I’m here. With you.”

She felt a little sad for him. He was obviously brilliant, she had seen as much in the way he analyzed every little bit of information they had, and how he had never been to India, but seemed to know more about its history than Raj did.

Sheldon changed the subject and asked, “What about you? Why do you do this? Not solely because of who your family is.”

“I do it because I don’t want to be my mother.”

“You - you don’t like your mother?”

“I love my mother. I just don’t want to be her. She did what every proper young lady is supposed to do and married the first boy she fell in love with, had a few kids and was the perfect mother and wife. Which is _fine_ , it’s all perfectly fine. But it wasn’t for me. Neither were any of the very few options available for young women. I spent a lot of time around Indy and Uncle Henry growing up, and it just lit a fire in me. I craved the adventure and being a farmer’s wife wasn’t going to do it.”

“You knew what you wanted and went after it.”

Penny laughed and poured them both another drink. “That sounds nice, but the truth is I’m not good at anything else _except_ this. It was just pure luck that my only skill set was the family business.”

“I don’t give compliments out lightly but - you are very good at what you do.”

She smiled and took a drink of her feni before grabbing her fedora from beside her and placing it on his head. It looked completely out of place on his head, so she leaned forward and adjusted it until it looked right. “Maybe you’re meant for more adventures than a classroom or a laboratory can give you. The hat looks pretty good, after all.”

A hint of a smile hit his lips and maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe he was finally coming around to acting like a normal person, but she liked the way a smile looked on him. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this. Especially if it’s always like it was today.”

She didn’t want to tell him that it was sometimes worse, so she shrugged and said, “You survived out here longer than either Raj or I thought you would. That’s something. Maybe you’re meant to go back and be the greatest physicist who ever lived, or maybe this is your calling, I don’t know, Sheldon. But sometimes you have to look at things from a different perspective before you really -“

She paused suddenly and Sheldon gave her a look as if he could actually hear the clicking noise that her brain had just made. “What?”

“I’ve been looking at these maps entirely wrong.”

She moved the bottle and glasses off the table and started shifting the different maps until it started coming together in her head. Sheldon stared at it and then gave her a nod. “I see it.”

“We’ve been thinking with our narrow-minded, modern, American brains and how _we_ would have built this place. But an ancient cult? Not exactly the same mindset.”

She put the crude map of the temple that had been found among Mola Ram’s belongings into the center and made a few more shifts until it all started to lock into place.

“This defies logic.”

Penny nodded in agreement. “But that was the point. They didn’t want anyone but them to ever be able to find the stones, so they built the most complicated maze I’ve ever seen.”

“I happen to be extremely skilled at solving mazes.”

Penny couldn’t have grinned any wider as she took her hat back from his head and put it on her own. “Me too, Doctor. Me too.”

Tomorrow, they would find out just how good they both were.

 

&&&

 

Their new discovery meant they spent the rest of the night putting together a new map, figuring out that Penny had been in the right tunnel that day after all. Once they were sure what they needed to do, Penny quizzed him about his childhood in Texas and how very different he was from the rest of his family, while she told him about the farm in Nebraska and what growing up with the Joneses was like.

She offered to let him sleep on her cot or on the floor, but even their new level of comfortability wouldn’t allow Sheldon to break his routine. He crept back to his own tent in the middle of the night, and Penny quietly prayed that Musheer was sound asleep. The last thing she needed was the rest of the crew to assume something that wasn’t true.

Penny only slept for a few hours, waking up just as the sun was creeping in. She quickly took her maps to Raj’s tent and explained the plan, enlisting him to make sure they had the supplies they needed.

Sheldon was up shortly after she was and after a quick breakfast and a meeting with the crew, they were off to the tunnels they had discovered the day before. The three of them were armed with a few supplies and some flags to mark their path, but more importantly, the hope they wouldn’t run into another dead end.

Penny went first with Sheldon right behind her, and Raj trailing. They were only halfway to where she had left off the day before when Sheldon said, “I must apologize for my lack of chivalry by making you lead.”

“I’m not the kind of girl who cares about chivalry. I can also handle a pit of spiders a lot better than you two.”

She was sure she heard both of them shudder simultaneously, but kept on marching forward. They made it roughly three-hundred yards past where Penny had left off before when she suddenly stopped and put a hand out in front of her.

“Do you feel that?”

Raj stepped forward and nodded. “It’s warmer. Humid.”

She lifted her lantern up and took a step forward towards the warmer air. When her back foot landed, the entire floor slid out from under her and dropped her down a ramp. She landed on her hip with a sharp thud and yelped in pain.

The first thing she heard was Sheldon’s frantic cry from above, “Penny! Penny! Penny!”

“I’m fine. I’m going to be sore later, but I’m okay.”

“Is it safe to come down?”

She looked around for a moment before calling back, “No deadly spikes or creepy crawlies, so come on down.”

Sheldon slid down the ramp and joined her on the ground. They both called for Raj to come down, but just as he was about to slide on to the ramp, it began lifting back up. Penny jumped to her feet and tried to stop it from closing with her hands, but it was too fast and too heavy for her to get a grip. 

She ended up on her backside again, while Sheldon jumped to his feet to inspect the now closed door. There was no visible way to reopen it, so he shouted, “Doctor Koothrappali!” at it as loud as he could. Penny shouted, using Raj’s first name and screaming it as loud as possible.

After a few minutes of trying, she took a few steps back with a sigh. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“Of course. The stone is probably too thick for him to hear us, but I suppose it was worth it to try.”

Penny began inspecting the room, which consisted of absolutely nothing to inspect. The room was an almost perfect circle, with smooth stone walls and a dirt floor. The only way in or out was through the door in the ceiling, which, rather inconveniently, did not have a handle.

She pulled her pack off and sat on the floor to begin going through supplies and Sheldon joined her, doing the same. He looked over at her and said, “Surely, Doctor Koothrappali will be able to reactivate whatever triggered the door in the first place.”

“Surely, he will.”

 

&&&

 

Surely, he did not.

When it became clear that they weren’t just going to be down there for a few minutes, Penny made sure they only used one lantern at a time to save them. This wasn’t the first time she had been trapped somewhere, so at least she was prepared for it.

Hours passed, so they talked. He was easily the most peculiar person she had ever met, but she figured that meant he would never be boring. And when she talked about her adventures, he listened with complete fascination. When they weren’t talking, they sat in the quiet, both of them contemplating their situation but only occasionally bringing up potential escape plans.

When she yawned, he allowed her to lay down, with her head on his lap and sleep until his stomach growling woke her up. She sat back up and asked, “How long do you think we’ve been here?”

“Around nine or ten hours.”

Neither of them said it, but both knew that wasn’t a good sign.

 

&&&

 

By what Sheldon had estimated as being hour eighteen of their captivity, Penny figured she knew everything there was to know about Sheldon Cooper aside from maybe his blood type. She also knew that if someone had told her last week that she’d be trapped with him for this long, she would have guessed that they’d murder each other three hours in to it.

Penny had been keeping the lantern lit only when they needed it, so she didn’t realize he was awake until he said softly, “I suppose one can never truly predict their own death, but I did not see this coming.”

“Don’t be dramatic. You’re not going to die.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been through worse than _this_.”

Penny lit the lantern and lifted up the corner of her shirt to show him a scar on her belly. “Arrow. It was a gift from a, uhh, hostile rival down in the Congo. Almost bled to death before we got back to camp, but I’m still here.”

“Hmm.”

“That wasn’t my day to go and neither is today. I still have a lot to do out there in the world.”

She looked at him, the dim flicker of the lantern light hitting his face as he asked, “Like what?”

“Like have someone refer to Indy as being _my_ cousin, instead of the other way around.” Sheldon laughed quietly, but sharply, and Penny continued, “What about you?”

“I’ve spent my whole life learning, studying, regurgitating facts, theorizing and thought that was enough. Now that I might be entombed underneath the temple of an ancient evil cult forever, I’m wondering if I should have lived a little more.”

Penny smiled and placed a hand on his arm. “I promise you, Sheldon, you will have plenty of time to live.”

What happened next seemed to occur both super fast and in slow motion. He leaned in to her, so that his lips were just a breath away from hers, then paused as if he was waiting to see what would happen next. She was worried that he had suddenly gone delirious due to the enclosed space, since a week ago he didn’t even want shake her hand. So she tilted her head up as an invitation to continue, and to her surprise he did, pressing his lips to hers.

It was tentative at first, which seemed to confirm Penny’s suspicion that he had never had a girlfriend. Unlike a lot of men, Sheldon was in no rush, which was a point in his favor. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the rest of his body, so Penny leaned her body in to his and grabbed his free hand and placed it at her waist. She opened her mouth a little and Sheldon got the idea, opening his and doing a little tentative exploring with his tongue. It still didn’t feel entirely natural, but Penny was enjoying it regardless. He eventually leaned in too hard and his teeth bumped hers, causing her to throw her head back and laugh loudly.

It also caused her to throw an elbow back and knock over the lit lantern. When the room went dark again, Penny scrambled off of Sheldon and started cursing under her breath. He lit the spare lantern and she noticed in the light that he looked disappointed. While she scrambled to pick up the other lantern, she reassured him, “I didn’t laugh because the kissing was bad.”

Penny noticed something as she was picking up the fallen lantern and turned her head sharply to look at Sheldon. “You were wrong.”

“Pardon?”

“I don’t think we’re underneath the temple. I think we’re above it.”

She pointed to where the oil had leaked out of the lantern and seeped deep into the dirt. Penny grabbed a spade out of her pack and began scraping away at it, until she uncovered circular carvings in the floor beneath her. Sheldon joined her in the digging and when they were done, they sat back and stared at what they had discovered.

Sheldon let out a loud, sharp, laugh and she had never seen him look so pleased. “It’s a puzzle. A _physics_ puzzle. I built something like this when I was fourteen.”

Penny could hardly explain it, since to her it looked like a bunch of ridges and a few perfectly smooth round stones, but she watched as Sheldon wasted no time placing the stones in specific spots. It took a few tries to get the right combination, but one at a time, each stone began to spin and move on it’s own.

Penny clasped her hands together in prayer and looked upwards. “I wasn’t sure I even believed in God, but somehow He trapped me here with a physicist, so I may have to reconsider.”

Sheldon looked so satisfied with himself and this made Penny want to grab him and kiss him again, but it would have to wait as he motioned for her to stay back from the puzzle.

They watched the puzzle work for a moment, and then suddenly drop out from beneath the room, leaving a hole in the floor. Penny tentatively went to the edge and when she saw what was below, she almost cried. It was the temple that Indy had described, though a bit worse for the wear and with the lava extinguished due to the flooding.

“I told you we weren’t going to die.”

 

&&&

 

By the time they were able to secure the ropes to climb down, they were both out of breath and weak from hunger and exhaustion. They sat on the floor of the temple, not far from the spot where her cousin had watched a man get his heart ripped out and tried to catch their breath.

Penny grabbed her canteen to take a drink of water, but paused when she heard the sound of footsteps coming from a nearby alcove. Raj emerged with half of his crew behind him, and when he spotted them on the ground, he immediately looked sheepish.

“We tried to open that room back up, but the switch Penny triggered - it didn’t work again. So, we went around it and found another way in. Took us all night to figure it out, but thankfully we had Penny’s map. I promise we didn’t abandon you.”

“It’s okay, Raj,” Penny assured him. Sheldon, however, gave a half-hearted and less forgiving shrug as his response.

Raj quickly ordered a couple team members to run back to camp to get food and water for them. He then walked over and crouched down next to them. “I was worried. Sincerely.”

Sheldon spoke this time, “Don’t worry. She’s survived worse.”

Penny smiled brightly and then followed it up with a deep sigh of relief. She may have survived worse, but it hadn’t stopped her from worrying even when she had tried to hide it from Sheldon.

 

&&&

 

After some food and water, Raj offered to take them back to camp to rest, but Penny refused. 

“We made it here, and I want to at least see this place.”

Sheldon protested, “Penny -“

“One hour. Just give me one hour and if I don’t find anything, then we’ll go back to camp and return here once we’ve rested.”

Sheldon acquiesced with a nod, but Raj muttered, “You’re crazy.”

She walked through the temple with Sheldon at her side, while Raj worked with his crew planning what to do with the most damaged areas. They moved down to the mining area which was even more destroyed than the temple was. Penny sighed loudly, knowing that it might take months before they got it cleaned up fully.

There were small alcoves that the children had carved out, and she was checking those when Sheldon said quietly, “I believe it’s been more than an hour.”

“I don’t care.”

“Penny, neither of us are at our best right now. We should come back tomorrow.”

“No, no, no, no -“ She said just before stepping into the next alcove. Her feet hit a small pile of rocks and slipped out from underneath her, sending her tumbling down a short, but rough incline. 

She sighed and called up to Sheldon, “Okay, maybe you’re right. We should go.”

Her hand went to the wall so she could use it as support to get up, but that’s when she felt something smooth sticking out from the craggy rock. It was too dark to see and be sure, but something stirred in her gut.

“Sheldon, I need some extra light.”

He carefully stepped down into the alcove with his lantern and held it up to the spot that Penny was pointing at. As soon as it illuminated, her heart nearly leapt out of her throat. It was the same feeling she had every time she made a new discovery, and it never got old.

“Both stones. Just sitting right here the whole time. They were - they were so close.”

Penny turned to Sheldon, absolutely beaming, and continued, “This has been one hell of a day. Found the stones, cheated death -“

Sheldon’s brand of celebration was more like a slightly satisfied smile than anything exuberant, and it weirdly made Penny like him even more. She threw her arms around his neck and planted her lips on his. Sheldon was a quick learner, because this was even better than the first one, less tentative and he even managed to puts his hands at her waist without any direction. The first kiss had been nice, but this was a whole new level entirely.

When she eventually broke off the kiss, she looked up at him with a grin. “That was one to remember.”

She meant the past day, but she also _very_ much meant that particular kiss.

 

&&&

 

The stones were out of the rock wall by the next day, but Sheldon and Penny stayed there another two weeks to help with the excavation and promising to come back again if Raj needed them. One stone was going with them, and one would go to a museum in Delhi.

They mostly concentrated on work, but spent each night after dinner talking and kissing in near equal amounts. They were taking it slow, because Sheldon wasn’t the type to rush into anything, and Penny found it a refreshing switch from most of the guys she had dated before him.

Going home was a relief in some ways, but it made Penny nervous too. Their lives were very different, his was academic and planted in one place, while hers took her to every corner of the world. Things had been going well, but she worried if that would change once they were back in Connecticut. 

On the final descent to the airstrip at Mollison Field, Penny had just one question.

“Sheldon, did you only kiss me because you thought we were going to die?”

He paused, for what felt like an eternity, then finally said, “No, I suppose we might have eventually done that regardless. The thought of dying just pushed up the timetable. Did you only kiss me down in the mines because you found the stones?”

Penny reached for his hand and held on to it. “Definitely not.”

Even it meant dragging him, kicking and screaming, across the entire world, she was determined to make this one work.

 

&&&

 

Indy had his back turned when she stepped into his office, so she put the stone on the desk with a loud thud. He straightened up in his chair, then swiveled to look at it, as Penny hopped up to sit on the edge of the desk with a proud grin.

“You found them?”

She nodded as he smiled back at her. Indy stood up and gave her a brief hug before releasing her. “I can’t believe it.”

“You always underestimate me, cousin.”

“Maybe I’ll stop doing that someday. So how did you find it?”

She didn’t want to tell him they were basically hiding in plain sight just yet, not until she had a chance to tell him the entire story and to rib him a bit for not finding them.

“It’s a long story. Dinner tonight?”

“Definitely. It’s been too long, kid.”

Penny rolled her eyes, because no matter how old she got, he wasn’t going to stop calling her that. “Great. I’ll bring my assistant and we can fill you in on the whole thing.”

At the word ‘assistant’, Sheldon cleared his throat from his position in the doorway. Penny motioned for him to step inside and he nearly skipped towards them.

“Indy, this is my, uhm, colleague, Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Sheldon, my cousin –“

“Dr. Henry Jones Junior, of course. Everyone in the field is familiar with your work. I’ve read everything you’ve published and I’m particularly fond of the work you did in Karnak. And I’d love to speak to you about Malinalco some time and -“

Penny laughed and put her hand on his arm. “Slow down.”

Indy reached out to shake his hand and though Sheldon was not a fan of handshakes, he didn’t hesitate on this occasion. It wasn’t every day you got to meet a living legend. It was definitely the closest to giddy she had ever seen him be.

“Well, I look forward to hearing all about _your_ adventures in Pankot soon.”

Penny was sure she saw the hint of a blush in Sheldon’s cheeks, because the great Indiana Jones actually cared about hearing Sheldon’s story. Indy turned back to her, winked, and said, “Your _colleague_?”

“Hey, you don’t get to tease me for that. How long did your thing with Willie last when you got back? Two days? Maybe three?”

“Okay, okay, no teasing, at least not about _that_.”

She gave him a smile and said, “Anyway, we came straight here from the airport, so I better get this one home and get some rest. Dinner at seven, the usual place?”

“I’ll be there.”

She slid off the desk, and poked at Sheldon’s back until he started walking out of the office, almost unwilling to take his eyes off of Indy as he did. She made it to the doorway, when Indy called out to her, “By the way, good job, Pennsylvania.”

She nodded and answered, “See you later, Indiana.”

She shut the office door and walked down the hall with Sheldon for a bit before she spoke again. “You like him more than me, don’t you?”

“What?”

“I see how it is. This was all a ruse. Get close to me, and you get to meet the famous Dr. Henry Jones, Junior. Really, Sheldon, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

He stopped walking and turned to face her with a surprised look. “Penny - that’s not how - I wouldn’t.”

“It’s a joke, Doctor. You really need to get better at sussing out this sarcasm thing.”

He shook his head before he started walking again and muttered, “I’m working on it.”

When they made it outside of the building, she stopped again and gave him a wry smile. “So, Dr. Gablehauser gave me an envelope at the airport and I have to go to Peru in a week. I was kind of wondering if –“

“Oh. Oh no. I know I need at least six more weeks of field work but you Joneses, you’re dangerous, you practically got both of us killed <i>twice</i> and –“

“Now, that’s not true.” Sheldon raised his eyebrows in protest and Penny continued, “Okay, it’s partially true. But some of it was your fault too. I had nothing to do with the spider pit, and I didn’t mean to step on a trap door. And look, we came out of it, relatively unscathed and no worse for the wear.”

“Speak for yourself.“

“You _lived_ , didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, that’s the thought I comfort myself with every time I remember the _pit of spiders_.”

Penny’s smile brightened and she playfully punched him in the arm. “See, you _can_ do the sarcasm thing after all.”

“Penny.”

“Come on. Would you rather have some potentially dangerous adventures with me where you actually get a real taste of how things are? Or, would you rather sit around a lab in Connecticut and dust a bunch of pottery with Dr. Hofstadter?”

He looked like he was actually thinking it over. Penny couldn’t imagine why he even had to consider it, since Sheldon had once gone on and on about how Hofstadter was a decent guy but his work was an insult to the field. She moved closer to him and hooked her index fingers into the pockets of his vest to pull him toward her.

“Come on, Doc, what do you say? One more adventure with me? If it helps change your mind, I’m a lot prettier than Hofstadter.”

“Can we possibly avoid nearly dying this time?”

“We can definitely try.”

Sheldon wasn’t the type of guy to be convinced by a pretty girl batting her eyelashes, so she waited for him to come to the decision on his own without playing any games.

“I suppose –“

That was all the answer she needed. Before he could even finish his sentence, she went up on her toes and kissed him. She loved her work, but more than that, she couldn’t wait to show Sheldon there was much more to life than what you could find on a college campus.

**Author's Note:**

> All errors are mine. All inaccuracies, also mine.
> 
> This probably needed like five thousand more words of plot and another month of research. ANYWAY. THERE'S KISSING AND PENNY WEARS LEATHER AND A COOL HAT, SO LET'S IGNORE THE FAULTS AND FOCUS ON THAT.


End file.
